Mayor Mendenhall and SLC lawmakers decry capital city micromanagement by the Utah Legislature. 

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• Benjamin Wood
• Demonstrators at the Utah Capitol protest the banning of Pride Flags at public buildings on Friday, March 7, 2025.

CAPITOL HILL—Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said Friday that, in time, she will feel relieved and even grateful about many of the bills that passed during the 2025 legislative session, and how some of the worst potential outcomes faced by her city and its residents were avoided.

But on Friday, with still hours to go before the Legislature’s midnight deadline, Mendenhall was audibly frustrated and exhausted as she described the various attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, to interfere with the people and traditions of Utah’s capital city—like new state oversight of the city’s policing and street design, a ban on the city negotiating with its public employee unions and a prohibition on the flying of Pride Flags and other pro-LGBTQ banners at public buildings like schools and City Hall, where the annual Utah Pride Festival is held.

“It’s been quite a session,” Mendenhall said. “I still feel like it’s an honor to go to work protecting this city. But it's hard to feel like I need to protect this city from—I mean—you know what’s going on here. It’s obvious and I don’t like it. And Salt Lakers don’t like it.”

She remarked on the “audacity” of this year’s legislative proposals, and complimented both internal and external city representatives for their work to defend Salt Lake’s people and priorities. And she noted that while she has developed a productive working relationship with legislative leaders, that does not necessarily extend to individual lawmakers who made no attempt to speak with her, despite sponsoring bills that nakedly targeted the capital city.

“To constantly narrow what our city—and no other city—can and can’t do, because we dare to try to make our streets safer from speeding drivers, or we expect that tax revenue from a pro sports team playing in one of our neighborhoods might actually go to providing services in that neighborhood,” Mendenhall said. “I just don’t see how anyone who really believes in smaller, limited government or local control would actually support what happened during this Legislature.”

Mendenhall was far from the only Salt Lake politician to cry foul over the state's micromanagement of local issues. In their final press conference of the 2025 session, members of the House Minority leadership team emphasized the treatment of the capital and the attacks on its sovereignty by members of the GOP supermajorities.

Rep. Jen Dailey-Provost, D-Salt Lake City, said that “pointed” legislation had “marginalized” Salt Lake city. And while tension between the city and state is a perennial issue, she suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic and the stubborn issue of homelessness has added to the air of conflict in recent years, particularly among the influential businesspersons who have the ear of state lawmakers.

“There’s a lot more friction between the business community and the government in Salt Lake City,” Dailey-Provost said. “While we have made a lot of strides, it’s hard as as a city to carry almost all the water in dealing with the state’s homelessness problem.”

Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, remarked that she regularly has to remind her chamber colleagues that the residents of the state capital have duly voted for a mayor and City Council who they trust to represent their interests. She said it’s been frustrating to see legislators superseding local decisions that they personally disagree with, over the objections of locally elected leaders, and without the buy-in and collaboration of the Democratic lawmakers who represent the city.

“Yeah they’ve watered down bills. But why do we have the bills in the first place?” Romero asked. “Why are we telling Salt Lake Cty what to do? Why aren’t we being more of a partner?”

Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, have defended their incursions into Salt Lake City governance. They argue that—as the capital and the seat of state government—all Utahns have a stake and interest in the management and policies that shape the city.

The 2025 session produced bills threatening to hand control of Salt Lake’s law enforcement and local street operations to the Department of Public Safety and Department of Transportation—which ultimately passed under softened terms and, in the case of the police bill, after the ouster of the city’s police chief—and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said those and other pieces of legislation benefited from a process that saw stakeholders on all sides of the issues coming together to reach consensus.

“We were reacting to our constituents,” Schultz said. “I felt like it was really a win-win solution—we were able to work with Salt Lake to find a solution.”

Mendenhall said she spoke with legislative leaders on a daily basis, and she also noted the help of the Utah League of Cities and Towns in connecting with lawmakers and negotiating on the city’s behalf. While the League was outwardly silent on the specific targeting of Salt Lake City—for example, the street control bill was written at one point to apply only to large cities in Salt Lake County with an international airport in their boundaries—Mendenhall defended their public prioritization of municipal rights and the unseen, behind-the-scenes work that the legislative session runs on.

“They have a balance to strike and they also recognize that we’re the biggest city in that stack,” Mendenhall said of the League. “They showed up with us in negotiations when we needed them. They showed up at committee hearings and they absolutely showed up to have those quiet conversations.”